OSWALD ALICE

(P/B) MEMORIAL
Matthew Arnold praised The Illiad disguise but as themselves). To retrieve the poem's energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story, and her account focuses by turns on Homer's extended similes and on the brief 'biographies' of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more than names, but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably - and unforgotten - in the copiousness of Homer's glance. (From the publisher)...
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ΜΝΗΜΕΙΟ ΠΕΣΟΝΤΩΝ
Το "προφορικό νεκροταφείο" της Όσβαλντ, το μνημείο που στήνει προς τιμήν όλων των κοινών, "αόρατων" ανθρώπων, υπενθυμίζει κάθε στιγμή πόσο σύντομο και απρόβλεπτο είναι το πέρασμά μας από αυτή τη ζωή, και κατ' επέκταση, πόσο μοναδικό και πολύτιμο. Η -τολμηρή- απόφασή της να συμπυκνώσει την Ιλιάδα με αυτόν τον τρόπο αποκαλύπτει αναπάντεχα στον αναγνώστη κάτι από την πρωταρχική λειτουργία της λογοτεχνίας. Λέμε ιστορίες όχι μόνο για να εξηγήσουμε τα ανεξήγητα του κόσμου που μας περιβάλλει, όχι μόνο για να κατευνάσουμε το φόβο και να βρούμε παρ...
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(P/B) WOODS ETC.
"Woods etc." is Alice Oswald's third collection of poems, and follows the success of her widely acclaimed river-poem "Dart", which was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002. Extending the concerns of "Dart" and written over a period of several years, these poems combine abrupt honesty with an exuberant rhetorical confidence, at times recalling the oral and anonymous tradition with which they share such affinity. (From the publisher)...
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(H/B) DART
This poem is made from the language of people who live and work on the Dart. Over the past two years I've been recording conversations with people who know the river. I've used these records as life-models from which to sketch out a series of characters - linking their voices into a sound-map of the river, a songline from the source to the sea. There are indications in the margin where one voice changes into another. These do not refer to real people or even fixed fictions. All voices should be read as the river's mutterings. (From the pub...
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